France's Sarkozy may find it perfectly swell that an "al Qaeda asset," Adbelhakim Belhadj, is commander of rebel forces in Tripoli, a story gradually seeping into MSM consciousness. According to the Asia Times' Pepe Escobar, however, Belhadj, founder and "emir" of the previously (presently?) al-Qaeda-allied Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), is not alone. He is one of many such jihad commanders. Escobar writes:

Hardly by accident, all the top military rebel commanders are LIFG, from Belhaj in Tripoli to one Ismael as-Salabi in Benghazi and one Abdelhakim al-Assadi in Derna, not to mention a key asset, Ali Salabi, sitting at the core of the TNC. It was Salabi who negotiated with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi the "end" of LIFG's jihad, thus assuring the bright future of these born-again "freedom...

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the man who twice upheld death sentences in the Bulgarian nurses show trial and is poised to lead post-Qaddafi Libya. But don't worry: The State Department says he's a refomer.

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While making a correction in my column regarding Libyan "rebel" front man Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the former Qaddafi justice minister who now heads Libya's government-in-waiting, the National Transitional Council (NTC), I realized that US and NATO support for this man and the NTC and the "rebels" is actually worse than I previously thought, which was already pretty bad.

I don't refer only to the role Abdul Jalil played in the Bulgarian nurses show trial, which I mistakenly underestimated: I originally wrote that Abdul Jalil sentenced the five nurses and Palestinian medic to death when, in fact, as president of the Tripoli appeals court, he twice upheld their death sentences. Indeed, for these blatant perversions of justice (charges that the nurses had infected hundreds of...

Here are three things Americans need to know about the Libyan "rebels" the U.S. government isn't telling us.

One: The inspiration of the Libyan war is as much anti-Western as it is anti-Gadhafi.

The "Day of Rage" that kick-started the Libyan war on Feb. 17 marked the fifth anniversary of violent protests in Benghazi, which included an assault on the Italian consulate during which at least 11 were killed. The 2006 mayhem, as John Rosenthal has reported, during which consulate staff was evacuated after 1,000 to several thousand men tried to storm and burn the building, may be linked to the Italian TV appearance two days earlier of Italian minister Roberto Calderoli. It was then that Calderoli, in defiance of worldwide Islamic rioting against cartoons of Muhammad in a tiny Danish newspaper, revealed he was wearing an undershirt decorated with such a cartoon. In remarks widely reported in Arab media, Calderoli explained that "the gesture was a matter...

This is a map of known U.S. oil reserves. Oil production in any of these regions require no drone attacks, no NATO bombing raids, and no special forces on the ground. This would save US taxpayers at least $1 billion, the US price tag to date for installing a jihad-heavy government in Libya, the ninth largest oil state in the world.

A crazy policy, an evil policy, or both.

Now the fun begins: The division of (sp)oil among NATO.

Will Italy be the odd-ally out? Reuters featured analysis this week that considered the question.

It's important to remember the insurrection in Libya started in February with a "Day of Rage" commemorating a violent, 2006 protest against freedom of speech in Italy. Specifically, this was a post-Friday-prayers attack on the Italian consulate in Benghazi to protest an Italian minister's defiance...

In the Iraq War on Defendants, killers go free. Captain John McKenna, left, was shot and killed by an Iraqi sniper while helping mortally wounded Lance Cpl. Michael Glover. The sniper responsible for both of their deaths was recently released by an Iraqi court. Today, the McKenna and Glover families marked their fifth anniversary of their deaths with a memorial in Rockaway.

The families had been assured that "as long as there is a Marine in Iraq, the sniper will remain in jail." Their already overwhelming loss has been compounded by the failure of the Defense Department to inform them that Muhammad (Big Ears) Awwad Ahmad had been released.

As if that three-dollar-bill-phony pdf of a long-form birth certificate weren't alarming enough (browse through this archive and tell me you don't have any questions about its veracity), now it seems that Barack H. Obama, the 44th president of the USA, has an "alias" -- as discovered and documented by debt-collection and "skip-trace expert" Albert Hendershot. And that alias -- Harrison J. Bounel -- is currently being scrubbed from professional databases.

A FoxNews.com poll on whether readers trust the Libyan "rebels" cues up thus:

Another Arab country appears to be on the cusp of deposing its leader. The rebel-led Transitional National Council is poised to topple Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Do you think we can we trust the rebels?

This is an interesting question on more than one level. Given the extent to which Fox News has been depicting the Libyan "rebels" as our horse to ride against Qaddafi to "victory" -- with stories today emphasizing a drop in oil prices due to "rebel" gains and a not-so-subtle plug...

Italian minister Roberto Calderoli shows off a Mohammed cartoon on a T-shirt on Italian TV in 2006. In response, thousands took to the streets in Benghazi, ten people died in the ensuing violence directed at the Italiian embassy, Calderoli resigned, and today, five years later, that Spriti of 2006 has taken Tripoli.

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From the beginnings of fighting in Libya, John Rosenthal has owned the English-language reporting on the "rebels" -- a remarkable feat for an independent journalist competing with Goliath Media.

With anti-Qadaffi forces now in Tripoli, it's worth revisiting what may be Rosenthal's singlemost clarifying report on the jihadists roots of the insurrection, which go back to a violent Benghazi outpouring in 2006 against the West -- against freedom of speech and the Danish Mohammed cartoons. In these Libyan protests, which Rosenthal describes...

With non-Constitutionally-US-supported anti-Qadaffi forces taking Tripoli today, it looks as if -- to be as delicate as a NATO commander -- the "flickers" of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah have won. In franker words, America's jihadist allies, a significant presence among the Libyan "rebels," are now rising to power in Libya. In more startling terms, the same people who fought with al Qaeda against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan (and committed unreported atrocities in Libya), are now, thanks to the US taxpayer, very likely about to run or at least help run a state with the ninth largest oil reserves in the world.

But don't worry. Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman was in Benghazi all weekend, making sure everything works out all right.

On the Afghan border with Pakistan, in Paktika province, is a tiny, isolated and primitive American outpost called Combat Outpost (COP) Margah. What happened there last fall never penetrated mainstream consciousness, but on Oct. 30, American forces were surprised by a wee-hours attack by hundreds of unusually sophisticated fighters who were "armed to the teeth and shouting 'Allah Akbar.'" Or so David Axe reported, quite vividly, in Wired magazine, the lone outlet to cover the battle.

It took 12 apocalyptic hours, but the insurgents were successfully repelled. Of course, this wasn't the first time this outpost in eastern Afghanistan or its defenders were attacked. Others have even occurred during U.S. missions into town to "show our faces," as one soldier put it,...

Gen. David Petraeus, June 23, 2011, in confirmation hearings before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee

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In an April 2011 column, I argued that both Barack Obama and the COINdinista Right had good (for them) reasons to perpetuate wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama's reason is obvious. He doesn't want the nation to watch Iraq and Afghanistan falling apart during the 2012 election year. I wrote:

And falling apart -- I call it reverting to type - is the inevitable result of U.S. withdrawal. "Who lost Iraq and Afghanistan?" is not a question Obama wants to answer during the election.

Thus, Obama will slog on with counterinsurgency in stalemate, maintaining his weirdly logical...

Gen. Petraeus bestowing medals at COP Margah on the Afghan border with Pakistan in October 2010

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Command Outpost (COP) Margah didn't make "the news" back in October 2010 when there was an attack by hundreds of jihadists "armed to the teeth and shouting `Allah akbar' as they stormed the outpost," as Wired rather colorfully reported.

No, not even after Gen. Petraeus called the battle to defend this outpost in Paktika province along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border "one for the history books." Petraeus made that comment when he helicoptered in ten days after the fighting to distribute medals among these valorous soldiers. If the commanding general mentioned what national purpose they had served in successfully defending this tiny outpost on the moon, that didn't get picked up either. But I doubt that he did -- because there isn't any. There were no American deaths at this battle of Margah, which may be what made it so memorable.

Not so at COP Keating in October 2009, when 300 Taliban fighters breached a similarly tiny and isolated outpost near Kamdesh in a furious battle that left five eight Americans dead. In July 2008, a similar attack on a tiny, isolated and unsupported outpost near Wanat left nine US troops dead. These are some of the unreckoned costs of dysfunctional COIN theory, which the COINdinistas who run the US military relied on to insert these tiny outposts deep in hostile territory like pins on a map. Their mission was to serve as "hearts and minds" welcome wagons. After the men had to circle the wagons to escape with their lives, at least most of them, these outposts were closed. No Big Fish paid any price for what was deemed an intelligence failure; only small fry.

The space constraints of the newspaper column prevented me from listing in my most recent column exactly what topics the CIA did not consider "as current and comprehensive as possible," thereby pulling the plug on last week's scheduled 3-day Homegrown Radicalization conference. Or was it pressure from CAIR?

1) "Homegrown Radicalization and Recruitment" regarding the Lackawanna Six

2) "History of Islamic Extremism in the US"

3) "From Hatred to Harmony," a presentation by a former SkinHead leader and Neo-Nazi recruiter

This week, a three-day conference hosted by the CIA on "homegrown radicalization" was supposed to have taken place at CIA headquarters. It did not. The conference was abruptly canceled -- or, softening the blow, "postponed." Question: Did pressure from what we might (and should) call a certain "homegrown radical" group -- the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- make this happen?

Here is what we know.

On Monday, July 18, CAIR issued a press release headlined: "CAIR Asks CIA to Drop Islamophobic Trainer." It revealed that CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad wrote a letter to now-former CIA director Leon Panetta to that effect. The rest of the release is more opaque. In referencing an NPR report that slammed one counterterrorism trainer by name, former FBI agent John Guandolo, for "allegedly...

Just days after 30 U.S. troops, including 22 Navy SEALs, died when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, Adm. William McRaven took the helm of U.S. Special Operations Command in a somber ceremony at MacDill Air Force Base.

McRaven, 55, who oversaw and helped plan the mission that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan earlier this year, replaces Adm. Eric Olson, 59, who is retiring after serving four years as SOCom's chief.

I've been keeping watch on the fiery vortex of British rioting at View from the Right, where Lawrence Auster is tracking events with a close and critical eye on the reportorial blind spot on race that has marked most if not all of the news coverage. (He has also been noting similar blind spots in Stateside reporting on this summer's spate of "flash mobs" in which the unifying theme of the flash-mobbers' race is omitted as a matter of course. The stories themselves, even the widespread black-on-white violence at last month's Wisconsin State Fair, have failed to penetrate the national MSM.)

Such omissions, seemingly designed not-to-make-things-worse, are an affront to reality. In London, rioting mobs in London and other British cities seem to be notably or even predominantly black -- or so we gather from opaque...

The Afghanistan blame game begins with Time magazine putting it out there, albeit gently:

The influx of troops, requested by General Stanley McChrystal, approved by President Barack Obama and overseen by General David Petraeus, brought stability to some areas in the south. And that is part of the narrative Petraeus, who has given up command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan to become head of the CIA, wants as his legacy. But the surge — and other initiatives of the general — have not been the unalloyed successes they have been made out to be. Indeed, the downing of a U.S. CH-47 Chinook helicopter in Wardak province on Saturday, resulting in the single deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan, shows how fragile the situation is.

As we mourn the loss of 30 US servicemen in Afghanistan today, among them members of beloved SEAL Team Six, the nature of the mission that they have been on, and that all of their fellow forces in the ISAF coalition have been on for nearly a decade, must come into focus if The Madness is ever to be brought to a stop.

To that end, I note another story of loss, this one from a Guardian report on yet another inquest into the death of yet another British marine. These uniquely British proceeedings prove to be a mainstay of detailed information on the proceedings of the war that are otherwise unavailable to us.

Corporal Stephen Curley, 26, died instantly when a roadside bomb detonated by a 14-year-old boy in Helmand last May.

His patrol's mission?

"The fatal patrol was organised as part of an effort to reassure local people concerned about their safety."

So, the COIN-bots strike again, seeking to win Afghan hearts and minds, but only losing Western lives. Will they...

Gates of Vienna carries a chilling update from the erudite and prolific Norwegian blogger Fjordman, some of whose vast body of work was cut and pasted into mass murderer Breivik's so-called manifesto. In the wake of a frenzy in Norway to identify the anonymous Fjordman, which has closely resembled a witch hunt, the 36-year-writer quite literally knocked on police doors of his own free will even though he knew that would end his anonymity. His account of what happened next follows:

I am shocked by the hostile treatment I received at the hands of the police.

Lars Hedegaard heard my story and commented that he had never known of any witness who has been treated in this manner in any Western country, except for totalitarian...

At the very end of this story lies the money quote on the thunking bankruptcy, military and political, of the American strategy in Afghanistan. It is the bankruptcy of Petraeus-McChrystal-Bush-Obama-Petraeus "population-centric COIN," as Brig. Gen. Lewis Craparotta of Task Force Leatherneck still calls it, and no, it hasn't been phased out.

From this week's Signon San Diego story:

The Camp Pendleton Marines fighting in Sangin from the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment repelled insurgent attempts to retake the town, Craparotta said, and they expanded west, east, and north toward the Kajaki dam. The dam is a strategic target of the insurgents because it supplies electricity to Helmand and Kandahar, and controls flooding in an area known as Afghanistan’s bread basket.

“We have gotten a little more breathing room for the population,” Craparotta said.

They are the forgotten warriors of the Iraq War, the men whose lives and families and careers blew up in "murder" charges on a vicious battlefield, the pieces coming down in Fort Leavenworth's military prison where the men now serve long sentences. Together, they make up the Leavenworth 10, not always at Leavenworth and not always 10, a group of cold-luck cases still working their way up the ladder of appeals and the clemency process, their families hoping to free them before many more years go by.

They all got bad news recently when word came that the Army Court of Appeals denied Army Ranger 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, 28, a new trial despite the introduction of exculpatory evidence originally withheld by the prosecution. Behenna faces 13 more years of a 15-year sentence for the unpremeditated 2008 "murder" of an insurgent who killed two of his men in post-surge Iraq, an al-Qaida terrorist for whom the Army would issue a kill/capture order before realizing he was already dead.

A court in Jordan has convicted the mentor of slain Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Daily Star reports:

The Palestinian-born Isam Mohammad Taher al-Barqawi, better known as Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, was found guilty of “plotting terrorism” and recruiting militants in Jordan to join the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was tried in a military court with three other Jordanian Palestinians.

Maqdisi, whom Zarqawi praised in Internet writings, shouted at the judges as the ruling was handed down.

“You are convicting us of wrongdoing for something that our religion condones, which is standing by fellow Muslims against...

In the wake of the arrest of the AWOL Pfc. Naseer J. Abdo for plotting to attack Ft. Hood a la Maj. Nidal Hasan, a San Antonio paper ran a story headlined: "Trust is a casualty after Abdo's arrest" -- as if it weren't already after the Hasan massacre. Anway, the quotation of the day comes from a female soldier who didn't want to be identified. Here is why:

“I believe it is more important to protect our armed forces than to potentially offend someone,” she added, declining to be identified for fear of retribution by her superiors.

Can we earmark those debt-ceiling defense cuts to make sure these "superiors" are fired?

An email from Scott and Vicki Behenna brings news of a national disgrace: The Army Court of Appeals has upheld Army Ranger Michael Behenna's conviction for killing a known al Qaeda member (whom Michael and Army intelligence believed blew up Michael's convoy) because Michael lost his right to self-defense when he pointed his weapon at the enemy in the war zone.

I wish this were a joke, but it's a tragedy -- for all.

To the thousands of Michael Behenna supporters,
We are pained to share with you that the Army Court of Appeals has upheld Michael’s conviction and denied him a new trial. The appeal process took over two years (six months longer than is allowed by law) and their ruling was an absolute punch in the gut to justice for a young man who fought so bravely for this country.
Back in March of 2009 the sting of Michael’ conviction...

The International Islamic News Agency (never heard of it before; get used to it a la "Gallup Abu Dhabi") reported on August 1, which, as the dateline notes, is also Ramadan 1 (or vice versa):

JEDDAH, Ramadan 1/Aug 1 (IINA)-During the next few months, Washington plans to host a coordination meeting to discuss with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) how to implement resolution no. 16/18 on combating defamation of religions, and how to prevent stereotypes depicting religions and their followers; as well as disseminating religious tolerance [sic], which has been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council last March, in agreement with Western countries.

Sgt. Derrick Miller, 27, of Hagerstown, MD, was convicted this past week of the premeditated murder of an Afghan man in 2010. The husband and father of two was assigned to a Connecticut National Guard unit and attached to the 101st Airborne Division at the time of the shooting in Eastern Afghanistan. After joining the National Guard in 2006, Miller had three combat deployments and had recently been promoted.

On the frontpage of the New York Times today, there is a big story about sharia (Islamic law) -- no, I don't mean the below-the-fold story about the teen-aged couple in Afghanistan recently yanked from their car by a group of men (not cuddly "village elders"??) while some 300 surging, angry Afghans called the teens "adulterers" and demanded, a la sharia (Islamic law), "they be stoned to death or hanged."

Indeed, on pp. 610 and 611 of Reliance of the Traveller, the authoritative, Al Ahzar University-approved, Sunni guide to Islamic law, I find that stoning to death is the penalty for "fornication or sodomy" (the index reference for "adultery" directs a reader to "See Fornication").

I'm talking about the above-the-fold NYT story about sharia -- namely, the story about my Team B II friend and colleague David Yerushalmi,...

On Tuesday, I read a New York Times online report about a press conference held by Geir Lippestad, the defense lawyer for admitted Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. I found one of Lippestad's statements of interest, and saved it for future reference. Little did I know it would disappear from the news website.

The statement was: "Asked if the rampage was aimed at the Labor Party or at Muslim immigrants, Mr. Lippestad said: 'This was an attack on the Labor Party.'"

The lawyer's statement is the first credible assessment of motive, and as such it is a significant piece of the story. So why did The New York Times cut it from the final version of the story online and in Wednesday's newspaper?

The answer, I think, has much to do with how Lippestad's opinion fails to accelerate the rush of Times insta-spin, and could even slow what looks like a swift-moving drive to limit free speech about Islamization in the West.

This week, the madness of the counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN), which drives the war in Afghanistan, reached new heights -- or depths -- as revealed by two news stories.

In Great Britain, a former Royal Marine told the Sun newspaper after the inquest into the 2010 death of Sgt. Peter Rayner that soldiers were prevented from opening fire at Taliban fighters in the act of laying IEDs so as not to disturb the local population.

So as not to disturb...?

In Iowa, a community mourns the death of National Guard soldier Terry L. Pasker, who, along with contractor Paul Protzenko, was killed last week in yet another attack by an Afghan army soldier. DesMoinesRegister.com reports: "The U.S. military considered the area so safe that soldiers didn't wear body armor, so as not to offend the friendly locals."

So as not to offend...?

Fear of offending has long been a salient feature of our culture. It has become an expression of a self-deprecating,...

I was at Lowes buying mulch the other night. Even though it was 9 o'clock,
it was little relief from the heat and humidity in the outdoor nursery.
I looked up from piling mulch on my cart and saw two middle-aged Muslim
women in flowing gowns and hijabs approaching.
They pulled a cart up to a stack of mulch across from me and started tugging
at bags. I smiled and said hello, but they barely grunted.
"Boy, you all must be hot," I remarked, still smiling.
"Oh no," snapped one, speaking with an Arabic accent. "We choose to wear
this."
"Yeah but isn't it hot?"
"It actually acts as an insulator (from the heat)," she replied. "In Saudi
Arabia, it's made of pure wool and it cools you."
"Really."
The ladies were struggling to get bags off the top of the stack.
"You need some help?" I offered.
"No!" both of them said in unison.
Awkward silence.
"Where are your men? They should be doing this instead of you."
"They are helping to bring democracy to the...

Sgt. Peter Rayner, age 34: "Unlawfully killed" in Afghanistan, says British coroner. By COIN, I would add.

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I don't quite understand the British system of inquiry into death on the battlefield, but I greatly admire these efforts to explain and expose to the public the circumstances surrounding, leading up to and, in the execution of counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN), directly causing each tragic and unnecessary casualty.

The Daily Mail reports on one such inquest this week. For illustrating the madness of COIN, the lead says it all:

Soldiers were ordered not to open fire on Taliban fighters planting mines in case they disturb local people, it has been claimed. U.S. military chiefs ordered troops to exercise 'courageous constraint' and even warned them they could be charged with murder if they shot any Taliban without permission from...

The rapid and dramatic unraveling of British Government-Media/Police, aka Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is the summer's surprise as revelations related to complicity in the "industrial strength" phone hacking scandal have dizzily downed or outed key and lofty Murdoch executives, Conservative Party officials, and British police officials, including the head of Scotland Yard who, claiming no wrongdoing, has just elected to resign as allegations of police-News Corp-politics cronyism and corruption swirl. There is no doubt glee on the Left over the Murdoch meltdown, but that may actually be eclipsed by the glee of pricey public relations firms whose services have been snapped up by News Corp. now in major damage-control mode.

And what does it all mean? I did a radio interview with Jerry Doyle on Friday to discuss the silence on this issue on the Right in the US, where Murdoch, of course, through Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Weekly Standard, and more has become practically the sole support of conservative(ish) voices in journalism and punditry, certainly outside talk radio. How can that fact not have something to do with the silence? Paychecks influence. Hope of a paycheck someday influences, too. As a longtime critic of News Corp., of its truncated presentation of issues ranging from the origins of the housing bubble crisis (coverage truncated by Karl Rove?) to Islamization (non-converage resulting from No. 2 stockholder Prince Talal?), I think the lesson here is the frailty of the behemoth. Conservatives' growing dependency upon a singular personality or family for a platform always carried great risks, which we see realized in revelations of corruption and cronyism rhat demonstrate News Corp to be an insatiably, ruthlessly power-hungry actor, more than anything resembling a journalistic one.

A NATO soldier, shot dead while on patrol in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, has been identified as British.

"An individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform turned his weapon against International Security Assistance Force service members in southern Afghanistan today, killing one service member," an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) press release said earlier without disclosing his identity or the location of the incident.

The British Defense Ministry said later that the soldier belonged to 9th/12th Royal Lancers, and was killed on a patrol with Afghan soldiers in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand Province when his team was fired on. ...

Is this one and the same soldier? The reports about this NATO/British soldier killed Saturday by Afghan army are quite definite: He was shot on patrol. Yesterday, news reports about a NATO soldier, nationality unidentified, whom ISAF...

ISAF caption: Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan's National Security Advisor, and General Petraeus discuss the importance of reducing civilian casualties during a conference held at Headquarters ISAF. The conference provided an open forum for Afghans and ISAF officials to express their opinions and recommendations to help reduce civilian casualties.

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I went to the ISAF website this a.m. to see if there was any further information on yet another NATO soldier's murder at the hands of yet another Afghan army member, this one not to be confused with last Saturday's attack, which killed...

Ever wonder how it was that two Americans were killed last Saturday by a uniformed Afghan intelligence service member? You didn't even hear about them? Reports of the attack were extra scant and brief, muttering something about a "dispute" with someone in Afghan intelligence.

Who cares what it means. So says Petraeus Maximus in yet another exit interview, this one with American Forces Press Services and posted at the Pentagon website:

During his last full week commanding coalition and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus discussed his tenure there with NATO TV yesterday.

“What we have done is implement the so-called NATO comprehensive approach, a civil-military campaign … that does indeed embody many of the principles of the counterinsurgency field manual that we developed back in 2006, and which we employed in Iraq in the surge of 2007-2008,” he said.

Gen David Petraeus: "No country has suffered more from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida than Afghanistan."

That comment from a June interview with Military Times stopped me cold. Partly, it was the pat sweep of the superlative. But it was also the gratuitousness of the flip-side demotion of the American experience and sacrifice. The catastrophic terror attacks of 9/11 on our political and economic centers caused and still cause quite a lot of suffering, and they were just the beginning of a decade-long American crack-up, a self-ignited meltdown of reason and judgment that blinded us to the markers of the classical jihad in progress, causing us to set foundationally flawed policies accordingly, from war (COIN) to energy (dependence) from immigration (unprotected borders) to "outreach" (Muslim Brotherhood penetration). Blinkered, our strategists have spent billions and billions of dollars to send infidel armies to the umma to win "hearts and minds" (impossible) at a cost of thousands...

"U.S. politicians must muster the courage to scrap the fable of energy independence once and for all. If they continue to lead their people toward the mirage of independence and forsake the oasis of interdependence and cooperation, only disaster will result."

(Hint: "Mirage" and "oasis" are giant clues to the name of the writer's country.)

Answer: Saudi Arabia's Turki al-Faisal wrote the above in a 2009 Foreign Policy magazine essay hectoring "misguided" U.S. politicians who promote American energy independence from Saudi Arabia, one of the top oil suppliers to the United States. This strategy, wrote the former ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom, is "political posturing at its worst."

Don't you just love lectures in democracy from potentates of religious dictatorships? In President Barack Obama, it looks as if Turki has found his turkey: a president with the Saudi idea of "courage"...

"U.S. politicians must muster the courage to scrap the fable of energy independence once and for all. If they continue to lead their people toward the mirage of independence and forsake the oasis of interdependence and cooperation, only disaster will result."

Hint: "Mirage" and "oasis" are clues.

Answer: Saudi Arabia's Turki al-Faisal, who delivered this point in a hectoring lecture against US politicians who promote US energy independence from Saudi Arabia in Foreign Policy magazine in August 2009.

Da noive, yes. But in President Barack Obama, Turki seems to have found his turkey: a US president with the Saudi idea of "courage" to destroy not just US chances for energy independence,...

Ever get the feeling something else just might be happening in our world beside a certain 24/7-cable-covered murder trial? John Work isn't fooled. Today, at his blog, he notes a few little incidents that our news-challenged media remain permanently blinkered to:

In his slim book on Winston Churchill ("Churchill," Penguin, 2010), Paul Johnson reveals the secret of Churchill's strength as a wartime leader: He didn't treat military brass as the Oracle at Delphi and Solomon combined.

Churchill, Johnson notes, "benefited from a change of national opinion toward the relative trustworthiness of politicians and service leaders -- 'frocks and brass hats,' to use the phrase of his youth. In the first World War, reverence for brass hats and dislike of frocks made it almost impossible for the government ... to conduct the war efficiently."

In other words, it made it impossible to sack generals, even when the war was going disastrously. As Churchill put it, "The foolish doctrine was preached to the public through innumerable agencies that generals and admirals must be right on war matters and civilians of all kinds must be wrong."

Ireland has launched a bid to become the home of Islamic finance in Europe as it seeks to rebuild its once dominant financial services sector.

The taoiseach, Enda Kenny (wicked smile, above), who was swept to power on a wave of public anger at the taxpayers' €70bn (£62bn) bailout of failed banks, told the Irish Funds Industry Association (IFIA) that he was doing everything he could to "ensure" Dublin became "a centre of excellence for Islamic finances".

In his slim book on Churchill, Paul Johnson unearthed a highly instructive quotation to highlight the foundation of some of Churchill's greatest strengths as a wartime leader: He didn't worship, defer to, and otherwise treat military men as the Oracle at Delphi and Solomon combined.

Churchill, Johnson notes

benefited from a change of national opinion toward the relative trustworthiness of politicians and service leaders - "frocks and brass hats," to use the phrase of his youth. In the first World War, reverence for brass hats and dislike of frocks made it almost impossible for the government, even under Lloyd George at his apotheosis, to conduct the war efficiently.

I.e., sack the generals. Johnson continues with Churchill's own words: "As Churchill put it: "The foolish doctrine was preached to the public through innumerable agencies that generals and admirals must be right on war matters and...

Wen Jiabao taking in a little Hamlet in Stratford-on-Avon this week. Or: To censor or not to censor; that's not the question....

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It's not that anyone believes Chinese dictator -- sorry, "premier" -- Wen Jiabao when he says, as in London this week, "tomorrow's China will be a country that fully achieves democracy, the rule of law, fairness and justice."

Obviously, this is just the sugar to make the medicine go down. But the economic prostration of the West to the Chinese totalitarians, cushioned by our piles of "Made in China" belongings, feels better if we also convince ourselves that our concept of human rights is part of the Grand Exchange: Flatscreens for us; Freedom for them.

Dream on. The Danish paper Information published a scoop of all scoops this week, a series of stories based on a most unusual...

"There Goes the Neighborhood," Shariah Finance Watch reports today. What does that mean?

From the must-read story:

In downtown Washington, there is a major real estate development known as CityCenterDC. This $700 million development is described as a combination of office space, retail space and residential space.

The owner of this development, which will be one of the biggest in all of the District, is Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company. This is the real estate investment arm of the emir of Qatar himself, who rules the Gulf nation.

At this point it may also be worth mentioning that the emir of Qatar has also been involved in funding other projects here in the US. For example, in 2009, he granted $576,000 to the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), the non-profit operated by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, the primary promoters of the controversial Ground Zero mosque project. The $576,000 grant from the ruling regime of Qatar was...

Ordinary or extra-ordinary, our elected officials should explain this (with thanks to Marine Mom).

The Army Times reported on May 25, 2011:

More than 7,170 soldiers will deploy to Iraq beginning in mid-summer -- despite a security agreement that requires U.S. forces to depart the country by Dec.31.

The deployments are part of the regular rotation of forces and will include a division headquarters of 775 soldiers and two brigade combat teams totaling 6,400 soldiers, according to a Defense Department announcement Tuesday.

The soldiers will begin deploying in mid-summer and continue through the fall.

We have watched, rapt, as Barack Obama deliberated over exactly how many troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. The White House mission, as I see it, was to present the illusion of winding down an unpopular war without also disavowing or halting the disastrous Bush-Obama brand of nation-building -- which continues, we are told, until 2014. Life-and-death troop movements came to resemble a contest to guess how many jellybeans are in the jar. Distracted, no one seemed to notice the ground shifting ... in Iraq.

While we were looking the other way, the Iraq of anyone's lingering "surge" dreams vanished. But not under the drifts of rubble from the latest car-bombings to further bury the "fragile" security once secured by U.S. troops. Dream Iraq -- the "ally in the war on terror," the veritable Switzerland of Sunni-Shiite cooperation surge-improved security was supposed to enable -- completely disappeared (if it was ever there) in the hardened, U.S.-won corridors...